No AoE buffs? (Ret)

Hi all, please point this out to me if I'm being blind, but where are the AoE changes (GC kept touting "we haven't started AE balancing yet!").

I see a list of DK buffs this morning (which will be inadvertent buffs to their AoE; +frost % dmg etc).

We got SoR buffed to be "worth it" on 4(?) targets, but what else? HoR and DS still tickling our targets? Will Ret remain awful at cleaving with extra management through double jeopardy/SoT rolling? Still awful at AoEing low-hp monsters?

Hi all, please point this out to me if I'm being blind, but where are the AoE changes (GC kept touting "we haven't started AE balancing yet!").

I see a list of DK buffs this morning (which will be inadvertent buffs to their AoE; +frost % dmg etc).

We got SoR buffed to be "worth it" on 4(?) targets, but what else? HoR and DS still tickling our targets? Will Ret remain awful at cleaving with tons of management through double jeopardy/SoT rolling? Still awful at AoEing low-hp monsters?

The patch it out tomorrow, what gives?

They won't buff ret, too many people play the class. We're were they want us, dead last.

I don't understand why people say that a 5% buff to SoL doesn't increase our AoE DPS. Divine Storm, Seal of righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous are all buffed by it. the only complaint you can have is that the buff is too small, and even then, unless you can actually prove that we're so far behind other classes, you probably don't have proof.

if you say Raidbots, I say: sampling bias and meter whoring.
If you say Simcraft, I say: you don't know which models are modeled accurately enough. could be that paladins are undermodeled. could be that other specs are overmodeled.
If you say that you can't keep up with the rest of your raid, I say that's anecdotal evidence. for all we know, you simply have worse gear than the rest of your raid.

They won't buff ret, too many people play the class. We're were they want us, dead last.

Basically. Too many people playing Paladin in general, so they've gotta bring up class balance somehow. While we didn't really get "TO THE GROUND"ed, we're just shitty by comparison. You CAN do well as ret, but whether it's PVE or PVP, if you can do well on Ret, you'll go much farther on a "real" class/spec.

"In a good place" clearly has different meanings for different classes.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

I don't understand why people say that a 5% buff to SoL doesn't increase our AoE DPS. Divine Storm, Seal of righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous are all buffed by it. the only complaint you can have is that the buff is too small, and even then, unless you can actually prove that we're so far behind other classes, you probably don't have proof.

if you say Raidbots, I say: sampling bias and meter whoring.

The more a spec can do better damage by cheesing dps on the encounters when the damage doesn't matter, the more damage they can do on the encounters where the damage actually matters. Argument defeated.

Originally Posted by nzall

If you say that you can't keep up with the rest of your raid, I say that's anecdotal evidence. for all we know, you simply have worse gear than the rest of your raid.

Oh I pretty much own the rest of my guild (in most cases). Doesn't mean Ret is balanced.

what I mean by meter whoring is people who deliberately make the fight harder (either by wasting healer mana or by attacking mobs that should not be attacked) in order to appear better on WoL rankings. unfortunately, this happens more than i care to admit and it skews meter rankings to such an extent that it can make classes that don't meterwhore appear worse.

sampling bias is not just players that reroll specs to be more useful, but also that reroll class. I know many of the regular rets on the forum are good enough, but if many guilds believe that ret is useless and won't take any or very few, you're not going to see rets appear high on the meters, because their gear sucks.

Reith, you owning the rest of your guild indeed is not proof that ret is balanced. but neither would be you being dead last. we cannot talk about anecdotal evidence.

Lastly, I don't think we rets are in a good spot as well, but like a lot of other regular posters, i don't have proof that's actually reliable enough to reliably show that ret is bad.

I don't understand why people say that a 5% buff to SoL doesn't increase our AoE DPS. Divine Storm, Seal of righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous are all buffed by it. the only complaint you can have is that the buff is too small, and even then, unless you can actually prove that we're so far behind other classes, you probably don't have proof.

if you say Raidbots, I say: sampling bias and meter whoring.
If you say Simcraft, I say: you don't know which models are modeled accurately enough. could be that paladins are undermodeled. could be that other specs are overmodeled.
If you say that you can't keep up with the rest of your raid, I say that's anecdotal evidence. for all we know, you simply have worse gear than the rest of your raid.

For all we know you aren't actually a paladin. But it doesn't matter. Blizzard stated that ret aoe was low after we all said it as well. If you want to keep beleiving it isn't due to inconsistencies with the tools we use to measure it, then I could claim inconsistencies with any tool you use to measure anything. It wouldn't disclaim anything you have to say in the way you hope to disclaim this by saying what you said.

Looking at windlord normal, i can nearly double my single target DPS on my paladin by AOEing, with censure on just 2 targets.
Of cause divine purpuse and glyph of exorcism + lights hammer are mandatory for AOE, but with them, its far from bad.

For all we know you aren't actually a paladin. But it doesn't matter. Blizzard stated that ret aoe was low after we all said it as well. If you want to keep beleiving it isn't due to inconsistencies with the tools we use to measure it, then I could claim inconsistencies with any tool you use to measure anything. It wouldn't disclaim anything you have to say in the way you hope to disclaim this by saying what you said.

Yeah, GC did say that they were going to look at Ret's AoE damage. And then yesterday he said that after the changes they made, Ret's AoE was really good in their internal tests. Specifically,

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Since the Seal of Righteousness change, Ret is actually one of the best specs at clumped AE. I’d encourage you to try it out.

not all classes have good cleave. Rogues and warriors can't switch to insight and passively do 10k HPS, which I would say historically is more important than cleave damage on average. Ret's burst cleave is fine if you use holy avenger for it, but I can't even think of a fight where burst cleave matters

With buffed SoR and the new 4set Seal Damage anything anything with 5+ mobs feels great to AE.

However when there's only 2 or 3 I'm doing anywhere from 40-60% less damage overall than my peers.

context please, what fight, how much dps, what cooldowns, what classes? affliction locks and boomkins are looking fairly overpowered right now, I wouldnt compare yourself to them imo. I sincerely hope they get nerfed

For all we know you aren't actually a paladin. But it doesn't matter. Blizzard stated that ret aoe was low after we all said it as well. If you want to keep beleiving it isn't due to inconsistencies with the tools we use to measure it, then I could claim inconsistencies with any tool you use to measure anything. It wouldn't disclaim anything you have to say in the way you hope to disclaim this by saying what you said.

I see that you've only been here for 2 years, so I don't blame you for not knowing that i've been around in the paladin forums since 2009.

also, as I posted before, I never said that I thought paladins were fine. all I was trying to say is that if we want to prove that we should get buffs, we should do so with fundamental evidence, which directly originates from theorycrafting. I was using the same arguments that Ghostcrawler uses when we bring evidence of a specific type.

and he has a point. Simcraft placed paladins at the very lowest, with only shadowpriests lower, which I think is due to this undermodeling i mentioned earlier. So many people who thought paladins were too weak flocked to other classes, like DK's and Warriors, because those were mathed out to be better at their primary purpose. but if simcraft placed paladins so low because they are ALSO undermodeled, and in actuality paladins were fine, we just have sampling bias based on false calculations. it's like how 80% of warlocks were affliction because it was simmed to be the best, or how 80% of mages were fire at the start.

hypothetically, if paladins got a second melee DPS spec, that was calculated to do 110% of the DPS of ret, you would see all paladins play that spec, because it's the best. however, if it turns out that the ret rotation isn't modeled correctly and ret actually does 5% more than newspec, you're still going to see that second spec do much better on raidbots, because every good and mediocre paladin plays it, while the bad and loyal rets stay behind and play the wrong rotation.

Seal of Righteousness is just something that should go away. It is a dull, unnecessary buff that we have to switch to in order to enter "AE mode." The damage should just be folded into Hammer of the Righteous/Divine Storm, which would make our cleave slightly better at lower target numbers and make AE less of a chore to switch between single and multi-target.

They tried "Seal of Righteousness" with Warriors. They called it Berserker Stance. Making that the "AE stance" was a monumental failure and they quickly reverted it. Frankly, this is something that should also happen for Paladins.